


This Magic I Didn't Want

by alliancedogtags



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alain has some problems with anxiety here, Dark, Happy Ending, M/M, Pre-Battle Kisses, plus a cliched run away w/ me, somebody get the poor boy some tums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliancedogtags/pseuds/alliancedogtags
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo had told Cullen to take it easy on Alain. He only hoped that the Champion understood how grateful he was at the momentary squeeze the mage gave his arm before he was pulled away by the templars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> forehand warning: sidenote: there is a very very weak mentioning of the sexual abuse mentioned in alain’s wiki page ( http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Alain ) but it isn’t a very obvious mentioning, morely a tiny bit of faint memory where karras threatened to make alain tranquil, but i figured it was worth mentioning;;;  
> this fic is 100% an accidental ship, whoops, give alain love and a happy life please. starring the (in)famous leo hawke, aka the hawke i throw at all of my rare pairings! 3k words, kind of dark, but with a happy ending

[**commencer l’acte un**]

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and wicked and do not falter.” Her voice quaked when she spoke.

He tightened his white-knuckled grip on his staff, feeling the trembling in his knees and the terrified lurch in his stomach. Suddenly the breakfast they’d had before escaping the templars wasn’t tasting so good, the bile burning the back of his throat with an acidic citrus flavor.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.”

Alain watched as Grace’s hold on Decimus’ arm tightened, the woman weeping into his shoulder. Decimus looked out of place, a corner puzzle piece jammed by a child’s hands into the center of the puzzle. He sensed the unease that rippled through the rest of the apostates, who quietly and nervously mumbled amongst each other.

“Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.”

The praying woman’s voice was at a full rock and tilt now, the tears staining her cheeks with red trails and tattooed lips shaking when she spoke between sniffs. One of the other apostates had crouched down beside her, rubbing her arm in a comforting motion. It did nothing for her hysterics. Decimus’s conversation with Grace had grown more aggressive, before he gripped her retracting wrist tightly when she backed away from him and pulled a squeal from the woman.

“In their blood the Maker’s will is written.”

The silver of a knife glinted in the low light streaming through the cracks in the ceiling as Decimus brought it to his own wrist, marking an angry red line across the inside of his arm.

Alain was running before the blood hit the dusty floor.

 

***

Survival instinct.

Alain probably looked ridiculous in the way that his shoulders bounced against the walls when he cut a corner too sharply, his palms scuffing against stone, but he kept running.

The shadow at the end of the tunnel came into his line of sight too quickly for him to react. He found himself hitting a wall that was warm and hard, yet squishy at the same time, before warm hands came to rest on his shoulders, anchoring him, stopping him in his tracks.

His lungs remembered that they were not used to running, despite his thinner figure, and his heart hammered hard enough that he felt it in his skull, throat dry and sore and knees feeling almost jellyish. The hands on his shoulders tightened when he faltered.

“Woah, woah, woah,” the man who’d caught him straightened him up, and Alain caught his breath while taking in his surroundings.

Dwarf with a crossbow. A skinny elf girl donned in green. A blonde human with feathered pauldrons. The man in front of him had tanned skin, faded grey eyes, and a worried furrow to his brow.

And they weren’t undead.

“Maker’s blessing! I thought I was going to die down here in this.. this tomb!” The relief flooded his senses, easing a hint of the tension built up in his shoulders. “Are you with the templars? Please, I need to go back to the Circle. I never wanted to get involved in this. Not when he started making those… those things!”

“Who is ‘he’?” The man tipped his head.

“Decimus —” the name was a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue, “—it was his decision. He kept saying the templars would label us blood mages if we fled — why not use it if it’s our best tool?” The ugly silver knife slicing through the air stung at the back of his mind, reminding him that his stomach was still twisting and turning, threatening at his gag reflex. “He slit his wrist, and the magic… it rose from the blood and woke the skeletons in the cave.

“I ran. Decimus is wrong — blood magic is a work of evil, not just a power the templars keep from us for spite!” He felt the disgusting crackle of magic in use at his very core, knowing that Decimus was still working, feeling it in the pull at his reserves. Despite the warm rush through his body from running, he shivered deep down.

“Decimus is the leader of these mages?” Calm and easy, he questioned, even with the antsiness of his team behind him. The blonde human’s hand was clasping and releasing at his side.

“He’s crazy.” The words didn’t sound scholarly on his tongue. He didn’t care, though. It’d been under his skin since he’d met the man. “He said, with our phylacteries gone, no one would find us. We would be free… I think maybe he set the fire. There must be a demon working through him. No normal man would profane the dead like this.”

“Someone starts raising the undead and it’s all downhill from there…” The man gave a crooked grin which did nothing to soothe Alain’s nerves.

“I’ve been in the Circle since I was six. I’ve heard about demons, blood magic… they warned us, but I never thought I’d see it.” And it was true. Give him a paper and he could write down all of the sentences that he’d been forced to read from that dusty old book in class, word for word. Demons are bad. Blood magic causes demons. If you try blood magic, the templars will strike you down where you stand. “The rest of them, they’re still following Decimus. He’s gone mad. I think he’d kill us all just to take the templars down.”

“Ser Thrask waits outside. You will be safe, there.”

Alain didn’t wait any longer to push past him and down the dark stone halls.

***

Hawke. Aside from the fact that the dwarf had been lying through his teeth, as was cleared up in the grumbles from Thrask, Alain did pick up on the name. It fit him — the proud swell of his chest when Grace complimented his skills, or the way he carried himself. A bird of prey that took its victims by surprise with a short chase.

Hawke had met eyes with Alain over Grace’s shoulder, concern in the pale depths, and Alain had looked away, down to the sand that blotched the toes of his boots and stuck to the fur lining.

With Grace at the front of the group, he glanced over his shoulder at the man who’d anchored him when he panicked, who offered a meek smile before turning back to his companions. Alain swallowed hard.


	2. Act 2

[**commencer l’acte trois**]

Dress them up pretty like pets.

The room was a cell with a bed and a desk. It even had a complimentary templar standing right outside the locked door.

Layer after layer of blankets he wrapped around himself, feeling the straw-textured bed beneath his body as he curled in tighter to him, a prickle at the back of his throat threatening to make him gag.

Grace in some way blamed Hawke. She would continue to.

On his side he clutched at his tossing stomach, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the window and created a dark blue rectangle on the floor. The window wasn’t big enough to fit a body for a reason. The metal cross in the center made him think more of a jail cell than a bedroom.

Across the room his robes hung on the wall, neatly put away. The stitching too constant, the fabric bunching, the texture itchy against his skin. And Maker, was it suffocating, too tight here and an obvious pass-down there, crushing his chest and baggy at his legs, the collar high enough to tuck his chin into.

It wasn’t home.

But it had to be.

***

The cold of the stone pillar was comforting against his back, the spring breeze chilling his cheeks and seeping through the cloth of his robes. He listened to Grace uncomfortably shift, ducking deeper into the shadows at the edge of the Gallows Courtyard, tucking into herself as she had more often than not lately.

Neither of them wanted to be out in that courtyard, not with the templars lurking over them and passerbys giving them strange looks, as if they were less than man for the magic they bore. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t think about the grubby hands grabbing his robes and the threats whispered against his ear when the door had clicked shut.

Alain knew it was true. He was a mage, and he could say absolutely nothing for fear of Tranquility or worse — death. They would not believe his voice against a templar’s. So he sat, and let the burning memory of sensation throb painfully beneath his skin, ducked his head down so his chin rested against his chest.

Sometimes he wondered if Tranquility would be better than suffering as he did now.

Grace scoffed. It was enough to drag Alain out of his train of thought, and he followed where she’d stiffened up and glared to the lean rogue that spoke to a white-haired elf just at the entry of the Gallows courtyard, his back turned towards Alain and the sunlight glinting against his slicked-back hair.

The echo of departing footsteps proved that the mage had stormed away from her watch in the shadows, most likely asking to leave the courtyard. Alain had half a mind to follow after her, but the mixture of sun and breeze on his cheeks felt nice, and listening to the conversations of others definitely did a wonder in the sense of distractions from his boredom and inner troubles. He looked away at the approach of the rogue, whose shadow fell over him and was gone in an instant, Hawke crouched down beside him.

He wanted to retract, to draw away from the man, but there was a friendly tone when he spoke.

“I take it that the escape didn’t work out very well.” Hawke used the stone pillar that Alain sat against as a brace while he was crouched down. “And that Grace turned and left because she’s upset that I didn’t kill the templars instead.”

“That is a way of putting it,” Alain responded, not daring to look up, only focusing on the way his hands curled together where he’d linked them at his shins.

“I never caught your name.” Hawke’s smile was warm and inviting when Alain gave in and looked up, grey eyes twinkling.

“Alain.”

“I’m Leo. Leo Hawke.”

“I know.” Alain looked back down at his hands, rubbing a thumb over his calloused knuckles and looking anywhere but the man. “Your sister was brought in here not long after your trip into the Deep Roads a few years ago.”

“Bethany. You’ve met her, then?”

“I’ve spoken to her in the mess once. She spoke very highly of you.” He nodded. Leo let out a chuckle that was small and empty, close to Alain’s space. “But with her position as an apostate and your sister, not a lot of other former apostates have been allowed to speak to her. I’m sorry.”

“How are you?” Leo’s hand moved on the wall by his head, leather gloves scraping against the rough edge of the pillar. “How have things been here?”

“I..” The words stopped at the back of his throat, and his stomach knotted, twisting up tight in the pit of his stomach. He remembered the Tranquil insignia stamped in blood-colored ink on the yellowed parchment as it was held in front of his face, remembered the threat in Karras’s face before his lips had turned up in that slimy smile. Taking a deep breath to steel himself and pushing the thought away, he looked the opposite direction of Leo, feeling the warmth in his neck threatening to suffocate him. “It’s been fine, Messere.”

In Leo’s hesitation Alain thought it over. Thought about the sunny disposition, the hands warmly grasping his shaking shoulders, the way he spoke to him as an equal rather than the guests to the Gallows who passed by and looked far away from the mage sitting against the wall, his face turned towards the sun. He could hear the sound of Leo pulling away, standing up and taking a step to leave. “Alright.”

“Wait, Hawke.” Alain pushed up off of the ground, standing up on sore joints from staying in a spot too long, a hint of lightheadedness darkening the edges of his vision momentarily. The rogue faced him again. “It’s… not alright. The templars…”


	3. Chapter 3

[**commencer l’acte deux**]

She had his face, his skin tone, the same nose. Her inky hair framed her face in silken locks, fringe sweeping into her closed eyes. Her cheeks were rounder, nose dipped on the bridge and lips obviously chapped.

Leo had called her Bethany.

That conversation. He hadn’t thought about it for years, even when Leo had smiled at him across the Courtyard when he visited, or he’d heard all about the newborn Champion’s rise to fame. There’d been that brief window when they’d been trying to get to the Viscount’s keep, him at Orsino’s feet and Bethany beside the Enchanter, but it’d been a very short window before Hawke had been running up the stairs alongside his companions.

Alain recalled telling Leo everything that had happened, from being locked up to silenced, to the helplessness he felt deep down when the paper was held up in front of his face. He remembered tucking his shaking hands into his armpits, turning away. Then there was the templar, who’d decided his time outside was done for the day, had grabbed him firmly by the arm and apologized for the inconvenience that talking to a mage must have forced on a noble such as Hawke. Leo had sat here, still looking slightly dumbfounded, watching as Alain had returned to the mage’s quarters.

They hadn’t much time to talk since. Now, he was busy doing Champion things.

Looking down at the circle mage that they’d captured, he dug his nails into his palms until he could not grip tighter, before looking up to where Grace and Thrask were talking.

***

He knew it was wrong from the start. Yet, Alain had done what he always had; stayed quiet, went along, voiced his opinions to side characters in the whole plan. It was his natural instinct.

Alain’s cheek stung from where Grace had struck him, but a different part of him was patting himself on the back in congratulations for finally standing up to her, telling her that what she was doing was wrong. Even Leo had seemed startled. Alain looked down to where the maleficar lay on the ground at his feet, oddly reminded of that time seven years ago when she had stood shaking at Decimus’ side.

His fingers had shaken when he’d pulled the knife from his pocket and cut the inside of his hand, and he remembered the breath of relief he’d heard escape Hawke when Bethany had sat up, drowsy from the spell.

Leo had told Cullen to take it easy on Alain. He only hoped that the Champion understood how grateful he was at the momentary squeeze the mage gave his arm before he was pulled away by the templars.

***

The city of chains. It felt relevant to their current situation. Alain leaned against the wall and listened to the booming crackle of magic being used farther into the Gallows, no doubt at the expense of fighting approaching templars. There was no quelling the nervous grip at the pit of his stomach, the way he held his staff with white knuckles as he tried to calm his racing heart. They’d be here, and they’d be here soon. This wouldn’t end well for either side.

Leo was on their side. That had to mean something. He stood chuckling with the pirate woman whose dark hair was held out of her face by a blue bandanna, before continuing on to the the chantry boy in shining white armor. Alain turned back to watching the door, attempting to at least slightly settle his pre-battle nerves.

His meditations were short-lived. Hawke was there, standing beside him, and when he looked up at the rogue he was almost envious of the easy smile that played on his lips, the lazy posture that he let out.

Alain wondered if it was a technique he’d learned over time to help with his companions. That would make a bit more sense.

“Are you ready for this?”

“I thought you wouldn’t side with us.” Alain carded his fingers through his dark hair, swiping his sleeve over the sweaty patch at the nape of his neck.

“Aside from my own personal opinions prior to making the choice, I saw a friend on this side of the line.” Leo rolled his shoulders, before cracking each of his knuckles. Alain watched on quietly, mulling over his words.

“Friend?” A short laugh. “I helped kidnap your sister.”

“And when someone you’d known longer than me asked you to kill her and turn to blood magic, you stood up for yourself.” Hawke glanced over at him, stormy eyes sincere. “You saved my sister. You turned down blood magic aside from removing her binding. I have plenty of things that I could thank you for.”

“Thank me?” Another question that escaped him without him planning for it to. “You were the one who saved me from the maleficar, serah.”

“You _can_ call me Hawke, you know,” Leo shouldered him playfully, grin returned. “Or Leo.”

“I’m not an equal.”

“Alain.” When he looked down, Hawke’s knuckle hooked under his chin, turning his face up. There was something mixed into his expression that Alain could not read. “You are an equal. Stop thinking of yourself as anything less. All the shit you’ve been through, the thing’s you’ve overcome, it only makes sense.”

“Leo,” Alain tried the name out on his tongue, and Hawke took the opportunity to swoop in and press a kiss to his lips.

He smelled like the drying sweat on his leather armor and tasted like some sort of noble’s tea. It was incredibly fitting, and Alain’s toes curled in his boots when he realized how undemanding the gesture was, how nice and soft his lips felt with the chaste kiss, before the rogue straightened up and pulled away with a chuckle and a soft smile.

This time when Alain’s stomach dropped to his feet, it was a good feeling.


	4. Epilogue

[**commencer épilogue**]

It had been Bethany who’d invited him; Leo had vanished to his estate after they’d escaped the Gallows, mostly to get the three who worked there out safely and pick up some of his things. Alain had been shouldering the meager bag he’d packed of rations and a change of clothes, actual clothes and not Circle robes, when she’d asked him to stay.

“It’d be good to have you along,” she said with a nod. “And if Leo wasn’t busy, he’d be asking you to stay with us, too.”

“And probably kissing you again,” crowed the pirate captain, Isabela, as she worked on tying down the ropes and settling everything on her ship.

Getting out this time could mean a new life, never trapped at the heart of the city of chains again. So he accepted.

The cool wind was refreshing, seeping through the cotton of his robes, robes he would instantly desert the second that he finally settled down in the subdecks and changed into a pair of fresh, modern clothing. His hair felt tacky when he ran his fingers through it, mixed now with both dried sweat and the salt carried on the breeze, salt he tasted when he dampened his chapped lips with his tongue.

Everything was refreshing and new. He didn’t feel closed in by city walls; in fact, for the first few hours spent sailing the open spaces had actually unsettled him.

Alain worked the tightness out of each knuckle, squeezing down on the muscles in his fingers to ease some of the pain in them. Cracking each directly after, he smiled at the stretched feeling in his hands, before letting them rest on the slick wood of the railing.

“Nice to be out of the city on good accord?” Leo had changed while setting things up with the captain in the subdeck; a few hairs had fallen messily from the slicked back ‘do he usually had it in, white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and trousers tucked into his boots. He looked more relaxed than whenever Alain had seen him, the worry lines in his face flattened out and appearance a lot gentler, less authoritative.

“Are you sure that nobody’s going to follow?” Despite the ease that had settled into his bones, the question still bothered him. It was a habit, and would be a tough one to break.

“We have a headstart. Plus, I know how to vanish.” Leo leaned his forearms against the raising, watching out over the night sea. The moon cast shadows over his face, paling out his tan skin the faintest bit. “I’ve been dead for nearly ten years now, you know.”

“The Champion managed to vanish?” Alain snorted despite himself.

“Even spoke to the Fereldan king. Told him that hey, I was still alive.” Hawke laughed. “So, what’re your plans?”

“I haven’t come up with any just yet,” he replied with a slight shrug, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

“You’re welcome to stay with Bethany and I,” Leo murmured, turning his gaze back out to the sea.

“That might be my best option.” Alain felt a long-needed smile tug at the corners of his lips, the weightlessness that eased the tension in in his body. “No arguments.”

Hawke slung an arm around Alain’s shoulders with a cheerful laugh, pulling him in to press a kiss against the mage’s temple.

 _Things are going to work out this time_ , Alain thought to himself when Leo finally kissed him.

It was about damn time.


End file.
